Brazil’s President Makes Changes to Oil Royalties Bill

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on Friday modified a bill that would redistribute proceeds from the country’s oil wealth, and moved to restore her administration’s priorities by channeling a large part of future revenues to an education fund.

The president avoided a showdown with two of Brazil’s most powerful states, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, by restoring their rights to revenues from oil wells that are already in production. The administration, however, will have to work hard to persuade lawmakers from the nonproducing states–which have an overwhelming majority in Congress–to avoid having the president’s changes overturned.

Brazil produces around 1.9 million barrels of crude oil a day. The figure is expected to rise significantly in the coming years as a result of enormous oil reservoirs that have been discovered in the so-called subsalt region, which lie beneath deep Atlantic waters, kilometers of rock and a thick layer of salt.